Internet Scofflaw

This will be cool, if it pans out:

Researchers have discovered a stunning new process that takes the energy from coal without burning it — and removes virtually all of the pollution. . .

Fan discovered a way to heat coal, using iron-oxide pellets for an oxygen source and containing the reaction in a small, heated chamber from which pollutants cannot escape. The only waste product is therefore water and coal ash — no greenhouse gases. As an added benefit, the metal from the iron-oxide can be recycled. . .

Fan’s process, called “coal-direct chemical looping,” has been proven in a small scale lab at OSU. The next step is to take it to a larger test facility in Alabama, and Fan believes the technology can be commercialized and used to power an energy plant within five to 10 years, if all goes smoothly. . .

The notion of carbon sequestration, in which CO2 would be pulled out of the air and stored, seems awfully hard. This sounds much more plausible. I hope it can be made cost effective.

POSTSCRIPT: Interestingly, the environmentalists — who ought to be delighted by a way to burn coal and generate only solid waste — seem to be against it. One might get the impression that they aren’t anti-pollution but anti-energy.

Yikes! If you use Find my iPhone/iPad/Mac, all that Apple requires to authenticate your identity is your mailing address, and the last four digits of your credit card number. Those are the same digits that get displayed in plaintext everywhere since you can’t do anything with just them. With that easily-obtained information, an attacker can remotely wipe and brick all your Apple devices.

SpaceX is headed to the space station. If mankind has a future in space, it has to be with private enterprise.

I found this article on our growing dependence on GPS very troubling. An excerpt:

GPS jamming and spoofing can have serious effects on geolocation and communications technologies that rely on GPS for positioning and timing; maritime and aircraft GPS use, and even stock market trading, can be affected by jamming, researchers said at the conference. . .

“Our modern society is almost completely reliant on GPS,” [University of Texas researcher Todd] Humphreys told the conference. “It could be deadly.”

We society really shouldn’t have a single point of failure. We need to fix that. But in the meantime, we probably shouldn’t let the president’s LightSquared cronies break the system.

Just when my ire at Google was fading:

Google Inc. and other advertising companies have been bypassing the privacy settings of millions of people using Apple Inc.’s Web browser on their iPhones and computers—tracking the Web-browsing habits of people who intended for that kind of monitoring to be blocked.

The companies used special computer code that tricks Apple’s Safari Web-browsing software into letting them monitor many users. Safari, the most widely used browser on mobile devices, is designed to block such tracking by default.

Google disabled its code after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

Facebook is sharing all its users’ private status updates and messages with Politico, an on-line publication focusing on politics. This is supposed to be okay, because all that material will be reviewed only by computers, not by people.

Personally, I would find that reassurance un-reassuring, even if I believed it, which I’m not sure I do. But it doesn’t really affect me, because I already recognize that nothing I put on Facebook is private.

(Via Althouse.)

NASA’s scheme (subscription required) for getting its next Mars rover to the surface sounds awfully complicated, but it sure will be cool if it works:

Curiosity’s size makes getting it safely onto the Martian surface tricky. Previous rovers have deployed parachutes to slow their descents, and have then crashed into the ground using airbags to cushion their impacts. Curiosity is too massive for that approach to work. Instead, NASA hopes to deposit it on Mars using a contraption it has dubbed a skycrane.

As with the other rovers, Curiosity’s mother ship will rely on heat shields and air-resistance, and then on a parachute, to slow its arrival. But at an altitude of 1.6km a specially designed descent stage bearing the rover will drop away from this vehicle. The descent stage has eight rocket motors on its corners. These will slow its fall to a relatively sedate 0.75 metres a second. When it is about 20 metres above the surface, the rover will be lowered from it on wires and deposited gently onto the Martian landscape. The cables will then be cut with explosives, the descent stage will fly off and crash land elsewhere, and Curiosity will begin its mission.

XKCD on passwords:

I think this is probably an artifact of the days when passwords were a maximum of eight characters. Old habits are hard to break.

(Via Instapundit.)

A startup company can locate nearly anyone’s mobile phone in North America, given just the phone number. Yikes.

Good things about iOS5: I like being able to use the volume button to take pictures.

Bad things about iOS5: It’s taken me literally hours to get my phone working about as well as before the upgrade.

Wow. I have no idea if OnStar was a respected brand, but if it was, it sure won’t be much longer:

Navigation-and-emergency-services company OnStar is notifying its six million account holders that it will keep a complete accounting of the speed and location of OnStar-equipped vehicles, even for drivers who discontinue monthly service.

OnStar began e-mailing customers Monday about its update to the privacy policy, which grants OnStar the right to sell that GPS-derived data in an anonymized format.

Adam Denison, a spokesman for the General Motors subsidiary, said OnStar does not currently sell customer data, but it reserves that right. He said both the new and old privacy policies allow OnStar to chronicle a vehicle’s every movement and its speed, though it’s not clear where that’s stated in the old policy.

“What’s changed [is that if] you want to cancel your OnStar service, we are going to maintain a two-way connection to your vehicle unless the customer says otherwise,” Denison said. . . Canceling customers must opt of of the continued surveillance monitoring program, according to the privacy policy. . .

Collecting location and speed data via GPS might also create a treasure trove of data that could be used in criminal and civil cases. One could also imagine an eager police chief acquiring the data to issue speeding tickets en masse.

Passing on the OnStar service isn’t enough; you don’t even want their hardware installed. Thankfully, that’s easy to arrange. Just don’t buy GM.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: OnStar reverses.

Despite everything they pull, I find it hard to hate Google. Why? Stuff like this. Shopping for flights will never be the same.

If you use the Facebook app on an iPhone or other smart phone, it copied all your contact info and stored it on their servers.  Read here for more, including an explanation of the incredibly (and no doubt deliberately) obscure process by which Facebook allows you to turn this off.

Apple has gone too far this time:

IPHONE users may soon be stopped from filming at concerts — as a result of new Apple technology. The leading computer company plans to build a system that will sense when people are trying to video live events — and turn off their cameras.

If this becomes a reality, I will be parting ways from Apple for good. Some things cannot be borne.

This isn’t just an issue for concerts and the like; this is an issue for any public event. Given that police in many places are already willing to break the law to keep people from recording their activities, can there be any doubt that they will be delighted to turn off cameras wherever they go. And that’s just the petty tyrants; then there are the real tyrants.

What really puzzles me is the mentality behind this. Have they forgotten who their customer is? They work for us, not for the concert promoters (and the dictators). It’s like the DVD player manufacturers who put in the “features” that prevent you from skipping to the main menu without watching ads. I paid for the player, not the studios! But this is worse than that. In that case, one could argue that the manufacturer was doing what was necessary for content to be available on DVD. That argument, implausible as it might be for DVDs, doesn’t wash at all for video recording. Are things going to stop happening in the world if Apple doesn’t prevent people from recording them?

(Via Instapundit.)

This could be a big deal, if it pans out:

A group of young MIT students has developed a new type of battery that runs on a rechargeable liquid fuel. The inventors call the fuel “Cambridge Crude,” and if the technology makes it to market, refueling an electric car could be as easy as pulling up to a pump. The batteries are powered by semi-solid flow cells, an innovative architecture that uses charged particles floating in a liquid electrolyte between two containers–one for storing energy and one for discharging energy. . .

The MIT News Office reports:

. . . Another potential advantage is that in vehicle applications, such a system would permit the possibility of simply “refueling” the battery by pumping out the liquid slurry and pumping in a fresh, fully charged replacement, or by swapping out the tanks like tires at a pit stop, while still preserving the option of simply recharging the existing material when time permits.

However, I would caution that this comes from the MIT press office, which has a history of over-hyping modest discoveries.

(Via Instapundit.)

Were you thinking that Google would apologize for locking people out of their Google accounts for criticizing Google’s customer service? Think again. Now they want to hold my money? Not bloody likely!

It’s bad enough that Ann Althouse’s blog was shut down completely for a full day, and damaged for days after that, due to completely unfounded spam accusations. It’s worse still that Althouse had to suffer abuse from Google employee/volunteer “nitecruzr” (seriously!). But people are losing access to their Google accounts for criticizing nitecruzr? Absolutely unacceptable.

I’ve moderated my distrust of Google over the past year, but this is a good reminder of why I distrusted them in the first place.

This is a big deal, if it pans out. (Via the Corner.)

The New York Times is accusing Facebook of hypocrisy, advocating the use of real names in social networking but making anonymous attacks against Google.

The criticism is fair enough, but this shouldn’t surprise us. Corporations, like governments, are run by fallen humans and you’re making a mistake if you expect too much of them.

Sounds like I’m not a fan of TomTom:

GPS mapping company TomTom apologized after it admitted selling data collected from its customers to Dutch police, the Financial Times reported Friday. The Amsterdam-based company sold data to cops in The Netherlands that was then used to help police set speed traps for motorists.

To be clear, TomTom wasn’t selling personally identifiable information (at least, such is not alleged), but what they did do is clearly against the interests of their customers.

The new iPhone software update removes the location tracking “feature”. To my knowledge, they still haven’t explained why it was there in the first place.

UPDATE (5/13): A reader points out the Apple press release. I’m still puzzled, though.  The press release says:

The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location . . .

But this contradicts the Guardian’s story:

The file contains the latitude and longitude of the phone’s recorded coordinates along with a timestamp . . .

I wonder who’s right. (Also, Apple has a history of collecting location information.)

The iPhone tracks all your movements using GPS, and keeps a record. Worse, that record is transfered to your computer when you sync your phone. Worse still, that record is persistent: when you migrate to a new phone, the record migrates with you.

Apple declined to explain what the hell they are doing.